Baffled! (1973)

Baffled! (1972) is likely to live up to its title on a first viewing. Not so much because the plot or premise is particularly complex, but because it never seems clear as to what it wants to be: occult mystery, light action adventure, thriller with romantic overtones or crime movie with paranormal trappings? It has elements of all of these, jostling with each other for attention as its somewhat meandering story unfolds. In truth, it doesn’t even feel like a film, as such, more like one of those TV movies cobbled together from disparate episodes of a short-lived TV series. Which isn’t really surprising as it was actually shot as a pilot for an unsold TV series. Subsequently released to cinemas in the UK as a theatrical feature and shown in the US (in a lightly shorter version) as a TV movie, Baffled! makes for a curious watch, its ending clearly designed to lead into another adventure that never materialised. Obviously, the film’s biggest draw is Leonard Nimoy in the lead role – most definitely not playing Mr Spock. His presence was doubtless designed to capitalise upon the popularity of his most famous role: although Star Trek had been showing on the BBC since the late sixties, it seemed to hit the heights of its UK popularity in the early seventies, as more viewers were able to see its frequent re-runs in colour. While Nimoy had already been seen in various non-Spock roles – most notably in Mission Impossible – there was still a certain novelty in seeing him playing characters with a full range of emotions.

In Baffled! he plays racing driver Tom Kovack who, in the middle of a race, starts having visions of an English mansion and a threatened woman, causing him to crash. Rare and occult book dealer Michele Brent (Susan Hampshire), sees him interviewed about the visions on TV and immediately deduces that he has ‘the gift’ and meets with him to urge Kovack to travel to the UK and try to save the woman in danger from evil forces. The rest of the film follows the efforts of this unlikely duo to try and make sense of his ongoing visions as they investigate various shady goings on at the mansion, which turns out to be a luxury hotel, where the woman, actually a film star, played by Vera Miles, is staying with her young daughter, at the invitation of her estranged and now missing husband. Shifty characters played by various British TV actors abound, weirdness piles upon weirdness, before everything goes somewhat Scooby Doo for a climax involving masks being ripped off, locked attics and secret passages. In truth, it is all very inconsequential and the supernatural elements feel peripheral, as if they have been tacked onto a regular mystery script as an after thought. The set up is intriguing, but never really develops into anything out of the ordinary, the whole film remaining rather formulaic. While the characters played by Nimoy and Hampshire are likeable enough and form one of those quirkily entertaining crime solving partnerships so beloved of mystery formats, there is ultimately no chemistry beyond the light bantering.

And Anglo/US production – it was co-produced by ITC and Arena (the company behind The Man From Uncle) – Baffled! is very nicely shot on a variety of UK locations, (even the early US sequences are pretty obviously shot in the UK), clearly designed to appeal to tourists. Despite its somewhat awkward narrative structure – it never gets over the fact that it was clearly designed to accommodate commercial breaks, the action feeling episodic rather than free-flowing – director Philip Leacock, whose directorial CV included both big budget Hollywood movies along with a number of other TV pilot movies, keeps the film moving along without too many longueurs. There’s an entertaining and nicely staged car chase involving Nimoy driving a vintage Bentley, although, in truth, it is actually pretty much irrelevant to the main plot and like many of the film’s other trimmings, feels arbitrarily tacked on. While it looks quite slick and glossy, its TV origins are painfully obvious in the obvious back projections in the driving scenes and some cheap-looking and over lit interiors. Baffled! is entertaining enough while it is on, but the resolution of its mystery is ultimately flat and underwhelming, with Nimoy’s newly acquired powers left largely unexplored and unexplained.